Now, however, Tim Cook has finally offered some insight, suggesting to Bloomberg that the company is focused more on self-driving technology than building a full car.

“Clearly, one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars – there are others. And we sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects,” Cook said. “It’s probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on. So autonomy is something that is incredibly exciting for us."

Bloomberg report that Apple initially sought to build its own car, but ballooning costs meant the firm focused instead on self-driving technology.

When questioned whether Apple would ultimately build its own brand of automobiles, Cook said: “We’ll see where it takes us — we’re not really saying from a product point of view what we’ll do. It’s a core technology that we view as very important.”

While announcing the company’s earnings for the final quarter of last year, Cook signalled that Apple was exploring car technology, but said there was “nothing to announce” at that time.

In April this year, it was reported that Apple had been granted a permit to operate self-driving cars in California and one of its vehicles was even spotted operating on a highway in the state.

In recent years, a host of tech companies have made inroads in the auto industry as viable self-driving cars come closer to becoming a reality. Uber and Tesla have both revealed their similar plans in recent times, while, last month, Russian company Yandex unveiled its prototype of an autonomous taxi cab.